mary johnson, angela, maya, police sgt mike duzan, i look forward to spending time with each of you tomorrow afternoon. i want to send my condolences to the people of oakdale, minnesota, who experienced a horrific shooting last night. i spent some time traveling around minnesota in the aftermath of the shooting in sandy hook, and what i have learned is that we can honor minnesota's culture of responsible gun ownership while taking some reasonable steps to make our communities safer. gun-control is a central part of this. i support a ban on assault weapons and a limit on the size of magazines. i also believe that we need to improve and expand our background check system. billions of people because of our background check system have been denied guns. it seems like there is a consensus being built around the idea that we should do background checks on all purchases of guns. part of improving the background check system involves updating mental health records in the national database and, of course, improving access to mental health is an important part of this entire discussion, too. what we c